What Does Jihad Mean?

Douglas E. Streusand is the author of The Formation of the Mughal Empire (Oxford University Press, 1989) and The Islamic Gunpowder Empires in World History (Westview Press, forthcoming).

Jihad, routinely translated as “holy war,” often makes headlines. For example, Yasir Arafat’s May 1994 call in Johannesburg for a “jihad to liberate Jerusalem”1 was a turning point in the peace process; Israelis heard him speak about using violence to gain political ends and questioned his peaceable intentions. Both Arafat himself2 and his aides3 then clarified that he was speaking about a “peaceful jihad” for Jerusalem.

This incident points to the problem with the word jihad: what exactly does it mean? Two examples from leading American Muslim organizations, both fundamentalist, show the extent of disagreement this issue inspires. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based group, flatly states that jihad “does not mean ‘holy war.'” Rather, it refers to “a central and broad Islamic concept that includes the struggle to improve the quality of life in society, struggle in the battlefield for self-defense . . . or fighting against tyranny or oppression.” CAIR even asserts that Islam knows no such concept as “holy war.”4 In abrupt contrast, the Muslim Students Association recently distributed an item with a Kashmir dateline, “Diary of a Mujahid.” The editor of this document understands jihad very much to mean armed conflict:

While we dream of jihad and some deny it, while others explain it away, and yet others frown on it to hide their own weakness and reluctance towards it, here is a snapshot from the diary of a mujahid who had fulfilled his dream to be on the battlefield.5

Does jihad mean a form of moral self-improvement or war in accord with Islamic precepts? There is no simple answer to this question, for Muslims for at least a millennium have disagreed about the meaning of jihad. But there is an answer.

JIHAD AS WARFARE

Jihad is a verbal noun with the literal meaning of “striving” or “determined effort.” The active participle mujahid means “someone who strives” or “a participant in jihad.”

The term jihad in many contexts means “fighting” (though there are other words in Arabic that more unambiguously refer to the act of making war, such as qital or harb). In the Qur’an and in later Muslim usage, jihad is commonly followed by the expression fi sabil Illah, “in the path of God.”6 The description of warfare against the enemies of the Muslim community as jihad fi sabil Illah sacralized an activity that otherwise might have appeared as no more than the tribal warfare endemic in pre-Islamic Arabia.

After the Qur’an, the hadith (reports on the sayings and acts of the prophet) is the second most important source of Islamic law (Shari’a). In hadith collections, jihad means armed action; for example, the 199 references to jihad in the most standard collection of hadith, Sahih al-Bukhari, all assume that jihad means warfare.7 More broadly, Bernard Lewis finds that “the overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists, and traditionalists [i.e., specialists in the hadith] . . . understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense.”8

These figures formed one distinct interpretation of jihad as war and Ibn Taymiya and his followers formed another. For the jurists, jihad fits a context of the world divided into Muslim and non-Muslim zones, Dar al-Islam (Abode of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (Abode of War) respectively. This model implies perpetual warfare between Muslims and non-Muslims until the territory under Muslim control absorbs what is not, an attitude that perhaps reflects the optimism that resulted from the quick and far-reaching Arab conquests. Extending Dar al-Islam does not mean the annihilation of all non-Muslims, however, nor even their necessary conversion. Indeed, jihad cannot imply conversion by force, for the Qur’an (2:256) specifically states “there is no compulsion in religion.” Jihad has an explicitly political aim: the establishment of Muslim rule, which in turn has two benefits: it articulates Islam’s supersession of other faiths and creates the opportunity for Muslims to create a just political and social order.

Islamic jurisprudence divides the inhabitants of Dar al-Harb (known as harbis) into two: People of the Book (Ahl al-Kitab) and polytheists. People of the Book, defined in the Qur’an as Christians, Jews, and Sabeans, have a distinct status in Muslim eyes because they follow a genuine-if incomplete-revelation from a genuine prophet. They may live undisturbed under Muslim rule so long as they accept a subordinate status (that of the dhimmi) which entails paying a tribute (jizya) and suffering a wide range of disabilities. As for polytheists, the law requires Muslims to offer them the choice of Islam or death, though this was rarely followed after the initial Muslim conquest of Arabia. Instead, Muslims generally treated all harbis as People of the Book. The jurists first sanctioned the inclusion of Zoroastrians in this category; Muslim conquerors of the Indian subcontinent extended it to Hindus as well, thereby effectively eliminating the category of polytheists.

The belief that jihad should continue until Dar al-Islam covers the entire world does not imply that the jurists expect Muslims to wage non-stop war. The Prophet Muhammad made a peace agreement with the Meccans in 630, the Treaty of Hudaybiya, and several of the early caliphs made peace treaties with the Byzantine empire (some of which even required them to pay tribute to the Byzantines). Although there is no mechanism for recognizing a non-Muslim government as legitimate, the jurists built on these precedents to allow the negotiation of truces and peace treaties of limited duration. The jurists provide for military prudence, permitting the withdrawal of badly outnumbered or overpowered forces. And some jurists added an intermediate category, Dar al-‘Ahd (Abode of Covenant) or Dar al-Sulh (Abode of Peace), for those countries where non-Muslim rulers govern non-Muslim subjects.

The jurists understand jihad not as an obligation of each individual Muslim but as a general obligation of the Muslim community. Only in emergencies, when Dar al-Islam comes under unexpected attack, do they expect all Muslims to participate in jihad warfare. Under normal circumstances, the failure of the community to fulfill the obligation of jihad is sinful; but an individual Muslim need not participate so long as other Muslims carry the burden. Shi’i writers make a further qualification, that offensive jihad is permissible only in the presence of the expected Imam-and thus not under current circumstances.

In contrast to this consensus view on a restricted doctrine of jihad, the prominent legal philosopher Ibn Taymiya (1268-1328) took a more activist position. He declared that a ruler who fails to enforce the Shari’a rigorously in all its aspects, including the performance of jihad, forfeits his right to rule. A vigorous critic of the status quo, Ibn Taymiya strongly advocated, and personally participated in, jihad as warfare against the Crusaders and Mongols who occupied parts of Dar al-Islam. Ibn Taymiya developed his outlook by building on a long tradition of dissidents in Islamic history who directed jihad against rulers they deemed insuffiently Muslim, including the Kharijis of the seventh century and the Assassins of the eleventh century.9 Perhaps most important, he broke with the mainstream of Islam by asserting that a professing Muslim who does not live by the faith is an unbeliever. Most jurists tolerated Muslim rulers who violated the Shari’a for the sake of the community, finding tyranny less bad than division or disorder, but Ibn Taymiya insisted on more.10 Ibn Taymiya and his associates are the most important intellectual precursors of contemporary Islamism.11

WARFARE AS NON-JIHAD

Islamic law condemns all warfare that does not qualify as jihad, specifically all warfare among Muslims. Military action against Muslims is justified only by denying them the status of Muslims, classifying them as apostates or rebels against legitimate authority.12 For example, when Caliph al-Ma’mun and his brother al-Amin struggled for control of the caliphate in 809-13, Ma’mun called Amin an apostate.13 Muslim writers use the term fitna, meaning trial or temptation, to describe divisions within the Muslim community. Though premodern Muslim writers do not say so, fitna became a permanent condition after 750, when the political unity of the Muslim community (umma) came to an end.

The earliest Muslim writer to codify the laws of war and peace, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan Shaybani,14 wrote only after the unity had broken down, meaning that Islamic laws on these subjects was formulated only retrospectively, by deriving general principles from a situation that no longer existed and would never again exist. In effect, the law of jihad was formulated after the conditions it fit had passed. The jurists then sought to reconcile the division and disorder of later centuries with the theory, but they averted their gaze from the ugly reality of intra-Muslim warfare all around them. Instead, they primarily sought to establish the legitimacy of authority in the absence of an effective caliph ruling a unified Muslim community. Islamic law, in short, never addressed the reality of political division within the Islamic world.

The division of the Islamic world did not end its expansion. Jihad in the sense of warfare continued, though the jihad ideal rarely determined the policies of Muslim regimes and almost never permitted them to join together against a common non-Muslim foe. Often the term ghazi, literally raiding, was used as a synonym. The Ottoman empire is often called the empire of the ghazis because success in jihad was a vital component of Ottoman legitimacy. But jihad was not the sole motivation, or even the sole ideology, for Ottoman expansion. Other factors included population pressure, competition with other Muslim states, and the lure of border warfare. In addition to the doctrine of jihad, Ottoman political ideology incorporated Turko-Mongol, Iranian, and Byzantine elements. A similar combination of ideological and other factors drove Muslim expansion in the Indian subcontinent.15 In other contexts too, Muslim rulers such as Uzun Hasan Aqquyunlu, the ruler of western Iran and eastern Anatolia in 1453-78, and the Safavid Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524-76) participated in jihad not just for abstract reasons of faith but to enhance their legitimacy and acquire booty. Though frequently invoked, jihad had little effect on political behavior in the pre-modern Islamic world.

JIHAD AS NON-WARFARE

Warfare is only one interpretation of the concept of jihad. The root meaning of “effort” never disappeared. Jihad may be an inward struggle (directed against evil in oneself) or an outward one (against injustice). A hadith defines this understanding of the term. It recounts how Muhammad, after a battle, said, “We have returned from the lesser jihad (al-jihad al-asghar) to the greater jihad (al-jihad al-akbar).” When asked, “What is the greater jihad?,” he replied, “It is the struggle against oneself.”16 Although this hadith does not appear in any of the authoritative collections, it has had enormous influence in Islamic mysticism (Sufism).

Sufis understand the greater jihad as an inner war, primarily a struggle against the base instincts of the body but also resistance to the temptation of polytheism. Some Sufi writers assert that Satan organizes the temptation of the body and the world to corrupt the soul. Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (1059-1111), probably the most important figure in Islam’s development after the prophet, describes the body as a city, governed by the soul, and besieged by the lower self. Withdrawal from the world to mystical pursuits constitutes an advance in the greater jihad. Conversely, the greater jihad is a necessary part of the process of gaining spiritual insight.17 By the eleventh century Sufism had become an extremely influential, and perhaps even the dominant, form of Islamic spirituality. To this day, many Muslims conceive of jihad as a personal rather than a political struggle. But Sufism provoked opposition, most importantly from Ibn Taymiya, who condemned many aspects of Sufism which he believed contradicted the Shari’a. His disciple Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziya (1292-1350) explicitly condemned the doctrine of greater jihad, discarding as a deliberate fabrication the hadith that originates this concept.18

Thus did three main views of jihad co-exist in premodern times: the classical legal view of jihad as a compulsory, communal effort to defend and expand Dar al-Islam; Ibn Taymiya’s notion of active jihad as an indispensable feature of legitimate rule; and the Sufi doctrine of greater jihad. It is no surprise that the disagreement over jihad continues in the modern era.

JIHAD AS WARFARE IN MODERN TIMES

Perhaps the earliest perspective on jihad from a modern sensibility (i.e., responding to the West) developed among Indian Muslims in the aftermath of the 1857 uprising (the so-called Indian Mutiny). Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan and others, writing as much for a Western audience as for their co-religionists, argued that jihad meant only defensive war and could not justify further resistance to British rule as long as the British did not actively interfere with the practice of Islam. Sir Sayyid Ahmad treated Islam as a private religion rather than a public force and presented it as virtually a pacifist creed.19 Though clearly a reaction to British suspicions of Muslims after 1857, this view affected Indian Muslim attitudes.

Modernist writers, seeking to reconcile Islam with Western ways, looked to the Qur’an to find a Islamic model to guide Muslim states. They sought a fundamentally defensive vision of jihad, and toward this end argued that all the wars waged by the prophet and the first four caliphs were defensive. Contending that the Qur’an requires Muslims to make peace if their adversaries wish to do so, they include a Dar al-Sulh in their model of the world. Peace treaties may be permanent and Muslims may be neutral in international conflicts.20 The modernists also work to reconcile Islamic law with international law. Thus, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, an umbrella organization that includes as members most Muslim states, expressed an interest in establishing an international court to reconcile the Shari’a with international public law. Similarly, Muhammad Shaltut, a former rector of Al-Azhar, contends that the Shari’a’s emphasis on international peace and the legitimate right of self-defense prefigures the principles of the United Nations.21

Abu al-A’la Mawdudi (1903-79), the Indian and later Pakistani thinker, was the first Islamist writer to approach jihad systematically. He presents it not merely as warfare to expand Islamic political dominance, but also to establish a just rule, one that includes freedom of religion. Mawdudi’s political life began with participation in the Khilafat movement, a post-World War I agitation among Indian Muslims that, among other causes, supported Indian independence from Great Britain. In keeping with this outlook, jihad for Mawdudi was akin to war of liberation; Islamic rule means freedom and justice, even for non-Muslims.

Islam wants to employ all the forces and means that can be employed for bringing about a universal, all-embracing revolution. It will spare no efforts for the achievement of this supreme objective. This far-reaching struggle that continuously exhausts all forces and this employment of all possible means are called jihad.22

Mawdudi’s outlook significantly changes jihad, beginning its association with anticolonialism and “national liberation movements” that seek not to expand Islamic rule but to establish independent states-not to force non-Muslims to accept dhimmi status but to make them politically independent. Mawdudi’s approach paved the way for Arab resistance to Zionism and Israel to be called jihad. In this spirit, the rector of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University contended in 1973 that all Egyptians, Christians included, must participate in jihad against Israel.23 And thus did the secular PLO make itself the leader of an essentially secularized jihad-as in Arafat’s statement about a “jihad to liberate Jerusalem.”

Although Mawdudi’s conception opens the door to a secular and nationalist interpretation of jihad, neither he nor his acolytes went through that door. Such Islamist thinkers as Hasan al-Banna (1906-49) and Sayyid Qutb (1906-56) followed Mawdudi’s emphasis on its role in establishing a truly Islamic government. For them, as for Ibn Taymiya, jihad includes the overthrow of governments that fail to enforce the Shari’a. Jihad here again subsumes the idea of revolution, though this time a purely Islamic one. Before directing jihad against external enemies, Muslims must first deal with their own rulers. If leaders such as Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar as-Sadat are not true Muslims, they cannot lead jihad, not even against a legitimate target of jihad (such as Israel). Significantly, Islamists consider jihad mandatory for all Muslims, making it an individual rather than a communal duty.24

The Neglected Duty, a pamphlet produced by Sadat’s assassins to explain and justify this use of violence, is perhaps the purest expression of this Islamist perspective on jihad. (Its author, Muhammad ‘Abd al-Salam Faraj was executed along with the actual killers.) It argues that jihad as armed action is the cornerstone and heart of Islam; the neglect of jihad has caused the current depressed position of Islam in the world. Force must be used, for it alone can destroy idols. Abraham and Muhammad both began their careers by smashing idols; the Islamists propose to follow their example. The Neglected Duty defines the current rulers of the Muslim world (such as Sadat) as apostates, despite their profession of Islam and obedience to some of its laws, and advocates their execution. The Neglected Duty is explicitly messianic, asserting that Muslims must “exert every conceivable effort” to bring about the establishment of truly Islamic government, a restoration of the caliphate, and the expansion of Dar al-Islam; and their success is inevitable.25

Shi’i revolutionaries have a similar perspective. Ayatollah Khomeini (1903-89) contends that jurists, “by means of jihad and enjoining the good and forbidding the evil,26 must expose and overthrow tyrannical rulers and rouse the people so the universal movement of all alert Muslims can establish Islamic government in the place of tyrannical regimes.” The proper teaching of Islam will cause “the entire population to become mujahids.”27 Ayatollah Muhammad Mutahhari, a top ideologue of the Iranian Revolution, considers jihad a necessary consequence of Islam’s content; having political aims, Islam must sanction armed force and provide laws for its use. Mutahhari deems jihad defensive; but his definition includes the defense against oppression and this may require what international law would consider a war of aggression. For example, he endorses an attack on a country of polytheists, not to impose Islam but to eliminate the evils of polytheism. Mutahhari finds that the doctrine of jihad marks Islam’s superiority over Christianity, for Christianity lacks the political and social agenda necessary for a doctrine of jihad.28

This survey indicates that while the concept of jihad retains a special place among the Islamists, the spiritual descendants of Ibn Taymiya, other Islamic thinkers of the modern age have developed distinctive approaches to this issue.

JIHAD AS NON-WARFARE IN MODERN TIMES

Two groups of contemporary Muslims have articulated doctrines of peaceful jihad. Modernists may see the concept as central to the religion but see it as encompassing all forms of political and social action to establish justice. Fazlur Rahman, a Pakistani scholar and long-time professor at the University of Chicago, argued that it had to exist to accomplish Islam’s social and political agenda. “There is no doubt that the Qur’an wanted Muslims to establish a political order on earth for the sake of creating an egalitarian and just moral-social order. Jihad is the instrument for doing so.”29 In this spirit, President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia, used jihad to describe the struggle for economic development in Tunisia, much as Lyndon Johnson spoke of a “War on Poverty.” In this context, jihad implies no more violence than does crusade in today’s English.30

The Sufi doctrine of greater jihad remains alive. Though less influential than Islamism in the political realm, it may have more impact on the spiritual life of Muslims, at least in Egypt where one writer contends that the number of Egyptians active in Sufism may well exceed the number of Islamists.31 Sadat wrote articles for the first issues of Sufi journals in 1958 and 1979, both entitled “The Greater Jihad,” in which he welcomed the diffusion of Sufi ideas.32 On the basis of field work in Egypt, the Sudan, and Tunisia, an anthropologist mentions jihad only in the context of the Ramadan fast: “Fasting for the whole month is a . . . personal trial for Muslims . . . a form of personal jihad . . . part of the more difficult inner struggles with the flesh and worldy appetites.”33

The Sufi outlook remains important enough so that Islamists like Hasan al-Banna and The Neglected Duty author Muhammad ‘Abd al-Salam Farajfeel compelled to repeat medieval criticisms of greater jihad.34 This criticism, plus the prevalent definition of jihad as warfare, causes Sufis often to employ mujahada, a related word for al-jihad al-akbar.

THE IMPACT OF JIHAD

The concept of jihad as a moral struggle touches the daily lives of many Muslims, and not only Sufis. Jihad as warfare, though far better known, has had a narrower impact. In some cases, like the assassination of Sadat, jihad as warfare has had enormous consequences. But it has never mobilized Muslims en masse or transcended the ethnic and political divisions within the Muslim world. Few Muslim governments, and few individual Muslims, have acted in accord with doctrine. The conception of jihad as warfare in defense of the Dar al-Islam did not produce a Pan-Islamic resistance to colonialism. The many movements that arose to resist European expansion or occupation were regional or local, tied to a specific leader, regime, or other specific circumstances; at no time did a jihad movement arise which united Muslims with geographic, sectarian, or political differences. In most cases, jihad against colonialism formed part of a program of religious reform and renewal.

The most systematic attempt to mobilize Muslims against the West, the Ottoman declaration of jihad against the Allies in 1914, failed entirely. With its declaration of war, the Ottoman regime simultaneously published a fatwa (ruling according to the Shari’a) calling the war a jihad that every Muslim had to participate in-including the Muslim subjects of Russia, France, and Great Britain. To secure the widest possible circulation, the fatwa was published in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Turkish. But the fatwa did not cause significant Muslim defections from the Allied cause, nor did it prevent the Arab Revolt against Muslim rule.35

More recent invocations of jihad have been equally ineffective. Frequent calls for jihad against Israel have not overcome division among Israel’s opponents or produced an effective mobilization of their capability against Israel. Saddam Husayn’s call for a jihad against the United States, part of an overall effort to Islamize the image of his secular regime, may have resonated among Islamists, but it did not affect the outcome of the crisis. The same applies to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatullah ‘Ali Khamanei’s similar designation of war against U.S. forces as jihad. Neither pronouncement had significant political or military results.

Even in Afghanistan, where resistance fighters went by the title mujahidin, the idea of jihad had surprisingly little power. The Afghan cause did attract considerable support from the rest of the Islamic world, but only three Islamic states (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran) actually allocated significant resources to the mujahidin. Pakistan and Iran sheltered significant, burdensome refugee populations and had enormous political stakes in the future of Afghanistan. The Saudis had no such direct interest, but have a consistent agenda. They no doubt sincerely wanted to drive the godless Soviet invaders from the Dar al-Islam, but also to establish their variety of Islamism in Afghanistan. The other outside participants in the Afghan resistance were individuals who represented a marginal element within the Islamic world. (Marginal but not insignificant: they later formed an Islamist cadre blamed for Islamist extremism in other parts of the Islamic world, especially North Africa.) Moreover, the concept of jihad did not unite the Afghan resistance, which remained divided by social, political, ethnic, and ideological differences. Although the resistance groups all considered themselves mujahidin, they perceived different paths of God and sought to produce different results in human terms. Some groups fought for the restoration of traditional Afghan society, which they considered Islamic; Islamists fought for a restructuring of society in accord with their understanding of the Shari’a. These groups did not cooperate effectively and often fought each other rather than the Soviets. The concept of jihad had little direct influence on the course of the Afghan war.36 After the Soviet withdrawal and the establishment of a new government, they continue to fight each other.37

Most Muslims do not see jihad as warfare as an active obligation, upon either themselves or the Muslim community as a whole. Reinhold Loeffler, working in a tribal village in southern Iran, encountered cogent criticisms of the Islamic Republic’s conception of jihad. One informant asserted : “young men with no proper training go to the front and are senselessly killed. I don’t believe they ae martyrs going to paradise.” Another one contrasted Khomeini’s preaching with the conduct of the Imam Husayn: “before his final battle the Imam Husayn exempted his followers from the obligation of jihad so that they might save their lives. Khomeini, however, pitilessly incites people to go to their deaths.” A father spoke of his son: “My son now is telling me about the true Islam; they have to fight a holy war (he says) and of necessity get killed. I tell him there is no holy war in the absence of the Last Imam.”38 This anecdotal evidence suggests that the Islamic Republic’s invocation of jihad met with mixed emotions, not universal enthusiasm.

WHAT DOES JIHAD MEAN?

Muslims today can mean many things by jihad-the jurists’ warfare bounded by specific conditions, Ibn Taymiya’s revolt against an impious ruler, the Sufi’s moral self-improvement, or the modernist’s notion of political and social reform. The disagreement among Muslims over the interpretation of jihad is genuine and deeply rooted in the diversity of Islamic thought. The unmistakable predominance of jihad as warfare in Shari’a writing does not mean that Muslims today must view jihad as the jurists did a millenium ago. Classical texts speak only to, not for, contemporary Muslims. A non-Muslim cannot assert that jihad always means violence or that all Muslims believe in jihad as warfare.

Conversely, the discord over the meaning of jihad permits deliberate deception, such as the CAIR statement cited above. A Muslim can honestly dismiss jihad as warfare, but he cannot deny the existence of this concept. As the editor of the “Diary of a Mujahid” writes, “some deny it, while others explain it away, yet others frown on it to hide their own weakness.”

The term jihad should cause little confusion, for context almost always indicates what a speaker intends. The variant interpretations are so deeply embedded in Islamic intellectual traditions that the usage of jihad is unlikely to be ambiguous. An advocate of jihad as warfare indicates so through his goals. A Sufi uses the term mujahada or specifies the greater jihad. Bourguiba clearly did not advocate violence to improve education and development in Tunisia. When ambiguity does exist, it may well be deliberate. In the case of Arafat’s statement about a “jihad for Jerusalem,” he intended his Muslim audience to hear a call to arms while falling back on the peaceful definition to allay concerns in Israel and the West. Only his later actions reveal whether he was co-opting Islamists by adopting their rhetoric or duping Israelis by hiding his violent intentions.